Msc: Data Science Internship - Classification of media step failure reason

Are you a Msc data science student who is looking for a graduation assignment? Are you ready to delve into the data to support print quality diagnostics for service engineers and automate the decision? We are looking for you!

Your assignment
Canon Production Printing (CPP) develops and produces a variety of commercial size printers for the business-to-business market.  Our inkjet printers are designed for high volume printing through a combination of high speed and low operational costs, while retaining high quality and flexibility.
Together with the printhead the media transport forms the heart of our printers. A failing printhead or an error in media transport directly impacts print quality. This has large consequences for our customers and is therefore undesirable. To maintain customer satisfaction these failure mechanisms need to be fixed as soon as possible as our printers are often part of the core business of our customers. 

The project
During printing the performance of the media transport function is constantly monitored and corrected. The logging data is therefore an important source of information to determine the failure mechanism. Sensor data of the individual media steps in combination with usage data of the printer might point to a certain failure mechanism in the media transport. In some cases the logging shows signs of multiple failure mechanisms. 
Goal of this project is to come up with a method (based on Machine Learning) to determine, from the different logging data tables, the most probable failure mechanism so our service engineers know which issue needs to be solved. 

Currently these diagnostics are done by visual inspections at the customer site, but using the results of this project the diagnostics can been done prior to the visit and point the engineer directly into the right direction.

Challenges for you are:
-    Develop a method to classify the failure mechanisms of media step errors automatically
-    Can you come with a way to deal with yet unknown failure mechanisms?
-    Apply the method to different types of printers from the same family.
-    Can you deal with large amounts of data ? The data is stored during every media step (typically hundreds of steps per print), customer print multiple prints per day and the population of printer extends thousands.
-    Are you willing to increase our customer satisfaction by reducing the downtime of a broken printer? Or even better: finding issues before the customer complains about print quality issues.

Your profile

•    You are currently studying Data Science or Data Analytics and you are looking for your MSc internship or graduation assignment at a big international company
•    You have a critical attitude and you are curious to understand your own observations.   
•    You have at least basic Python and SQL knowledge 
•    As of 1 March or April 2025 you are available for 3 to 5 months for a minimum of 4 days per week

What’s in it for you?
•    A challenging assignment with skilled coaching
•    Internship/ Graduation compensation up to €500,- per month
•    Travel cost compensation if you don’t have an ‘OV-weekcard’
•    The possibility to network with professionals inside and outside your field of expertise, thanks to our diversity of disciplines which you will work with
•    With our company values collaboration, innovation and ownership, we strive to bring out the best in each other, expand boundaries and feel empowered to take ownership of our work.

Interested?
Are you interested in this assignment? Please click on the button 'apply now' where you can upload your resume and motivation letter. 
If you would like to receive more information concerning this assignment, please contact Pawel Oortwijn, tel. +31 (0)77 359 3276. If you have any questions about the internship in general, please contact Milou Geelen, + 31 6 25653192.

What do we stand for?

We develop and manufacture high-tech printing products and workflow software for the commercial printing market as part of Canon, a global leader in imaging technologies. With around 3,300 employees across three continents and our headquarters in Venlo, the Netherlands, we innovate to create high-quality solutions that add color to the world. Guided by the philosophy of Kyosei—living and working together for the common good—our culture is built on openness, collegiality, trust and stability. We empower our people to grow, take initiative, and make an impact.

With our company values collaboration, innovation and ownership, we strive to bring out the best in each other, expand boundaries and feel empowered to take ownership of our work.